Catholic moral theology on sex, gender, and the family — explained from reason and Holy Scripture rather than handed down as rules. Dave Armstrong takes the six issues where the Church’s position is hardest to live with, and hardest to defend, and shows why Catholics believe what they do: abortion, contraception, extramarital sex, divorce, homosexuality, and radical feminism, one chapter each.
These are not new positions. All Christian groups opposed contraception until 1930, when the Anglicans first allowed it “in hard cases only” — and Armstrong’s premise is that even where Christians now disagree, the Catholic position is demonstrably the universal or overwhelmingly dominant traditional Christian position. Catholic moral theology, on his account, is not a “moralistic” or “puritanical” or “Victorian” set of negative rules but a positive teaching about who man is and what fulfills him.
Bookended by six appendices — Chesterton on sex, contraception, the family, and divorce; the 1930 Lambeth Conference text and its successors; and a record of denominational statements supporting legal abortion.
Inside this book
- The biblical case against abortion, set out as a seven-step deduction
- Why Catholic teaching distinguishes natural family planning from artificial contraception — and how 1930 changed everything
- The “one flesh” theology of sex: why extramarital intercourse is treated as a metaphysical, not merely a physical, wrong
- The Catholic answer to radical feminism, including the argument from Mary’s unique role
- Six appendices: G. K. Chesterton on sex, the family, and divorce; the 1930 Lambeth Conference and successors; denominational statements on abortion
